SEARCHENGINES
Google Mobile First Indexing Now Complete

Google announced that its mobile-first indexing “trek” is now “complete.” Which is strange to me being that Google said it was done moving sites to mobile-first indexing last May but hey, now it is really done and it only took just under seven-years to complete.
John Mueller, Search Advocate, and Nir Kalush, Search Console wrote, “It’s been a long road, getting from there to here. We’re delighted to announce that the trek to Mobile First Indexing is now complete.”
Also, with this announcement, Google is removing the indexing crawler information in the settings page in Search Console. That is the section in the about box that tells you when you switched over to mobile-first indexing, over here:
I should note, that there was a bug with the indexing crawler status for some sites where it currently shows a site being indexed using the desktop crawler when it is being indexed using the mobile crawler. I guess there is no need for Google to fix that bug if they will remove that feature. But as I said in that original story, most won’t really know if they switched over to mobile-first indexing (just assume you did I guess).
Google also said:
- A “very small set of sites” do not work at all on mobile devices.
- These sites simply don’t load at all on mobile devices
- Google can’t do anything to get them to be indexed by mobile-first indexing
- Google will continue to try to crawl these sites with its legacy desktop Googlebot crawler
- Google will re-evaluate the list a few times a year
- Google will reduce crawling with its legacy desktop Googlebot as much as possible
In November 2022, John said the last batch of mobile-indexing is coming soon. Before that, he said that the last batch would be in July 2022 but then in August said they were not done. As a reminder, Google started its mobile-first indexing initiative over six years ago, in November 2016. But we still have sites that are being migrated over from Google desktop-first indexing to mobile-first indexing at the end of 2022.
Yes, last November, Google removed any deadline they had for the mandatory mobile-first indexing switchover. As a reminder, in May 2021, we reported that mobile first indexing switch was not done yet and then in March we reported that Google was going to migrate over the last batch of sites to mobile first indexing soon. This was after moving the mobile-first indexing deadline from September 2020 to March 2021.
Earlier this year, John Mueller of Google said that the process might be done in the coming months. And then in May, Google said that was the last batch but maybe it wasn’t?
I asked John about that, and he said, “I thought it would be good to do an official blog post & to mention the SC changes.”
Forum discussion at X.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Search Console Was Down Today

Google Search Console seems to be down right now. If you try to access it, you will get a 500 server error. I suspect Search Console will be back up shortly but right now, if it is down for you, you are not alone.
Update: At 8:52 am ET Google Search Console is back, the tool was offline for about 50 minutes.
Google’s Daniel Waisberg is 100% aware of the issue. He responded to some posts about the issue, saying, “we’re working on it.” John Mueller from Google is also reposting Daniel’s posts on X.
Here is what it looked like when you tried to access it while it was down:
Search Console went down at about 8 am ET and returned at 8:52 am ET.
Here are the posts on X from Daniel Waisberg of Google on this issue:
I was looking for a plug to charge my phone, so I had to unplug the server 🤷♂️
— Daniel Waisberg (@danielwaisberg) November 27, 2023
Joking aside, we’re working on it! 👨💻
— Daniel Waisberg (@danielwaisberg) November 27, 2023
Who knows, maybe we will have a new Search Console feature when it returns?
Here are some of the complaints:
Search Console its down atm.
— Juanan Carapapa (@Carapapeando) November 27, 2023
@rustybrick search console is down pic.twitter.com/Nm6P84WJld
— Daramel (@Daramel29) November 27, 2023
Is Google Search Console currently experiencing issues? It’s not functioning on my device.
Cc:- @JohnMu @searchliaison @googlesearchc @rustybrick pic.twitter.com/YHjXfSVn30
— Vijay Chauhan 📈 – SEO for Enterprise Businesses (@VijayChauhanSEO) November 27, 2023
In Spain too pic.twitter.com/d1Yiwef72k
— Rafa Martin 👽🖖 (@rafainatica) November 27, 2023
Someone kick the server in the corner @googlesearchc @JohnMu @danielwaisberg https://t.co/79IFVVFdTM
— Pedro Dias (@pedrodias) November 27, 2023
Anyone facing google search console 500 error 🤨🤨#DigitalMarketing #google #searchconsoleerror #500error #trend #news # pic.twitter.com/jWDscWcz1f
— Pankaj besarwal (@Iampankaj10) November 27, 2023
GSC this morning… talk about a case of the Mondays pic.twitter.com/6H3KUG2sd4
— Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) November 27, 2023
Update: At 8:52 am ET Google Search Console is back, the tool was offline for about 50 minutes.
Should be all good now.
— Daniel Waisberg (@danielwaisberg) November 27, 2023
SEARCHENGINES
Google Testing New Flight Prices Rich Result?

Google may be testing a new type of rich result for flight prices. This test shows a section under the flight search snippet that contains the dates, trip details and price.
This was spotted by Antoine Eripret who was able to trigger this numerous times, over numerous days, while in Spain. Here is his screenshot he posted on X:
He also posted this video of this in action for me:
Recently Google told us not to put flight prices in titles because those prices change too quickly. Maybe Google is testing updating those prices in more real time through the use of structured data and is thus more confident to show them as rich results and not title elements?
I don’t think Google officially supports flight schema but maybe they will soon?
Forum discussion at X.
SEARCHENGINES
Google Merchant Center Automatically Creating Promotions

Google Merchant Center has been automatically creating and applying promotions to some of your products over the Black Friday holiday season. The truth is, Google has been doing this for some time, but more are noticing this now because there are a lot of discounts going around this season.
In fact, the new Merchant Center does a lot of things for you, automatically.
Rachel Lowell posted about this on X and shared this screenshot that shows “Your promotions are live on Google.” “Google found promotions on your website. You can remove this connection at any time,” Google added.
Greg Finn suggested, “If you’ve got BFCM sales setup – double, triple check those promos.”
Forum discussion at X.
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